The Natural Laundry Detergent To Avoid Buying At All Costs
If you want simple sustainability tips for a more eco-friendly laundry day, avoiding detergents with harsh chemicals might seem like a good place to start. Making the switch to a natural laundry detergent can be great for your clothes and the environment, but there are some that you will want to avoid. If you are in the market for something natural, there is one popular laundry detergent in particular to avoid: the Originally Yellow Plant-Based Ultra-Concentrated Laundry Detergent. Unfortunately, despite its positive qualities, some people find that it is not as effective as they would like, and the reason for this can be found in the list of ingredients.
The Originally Yellow Plant-Based Ultra-Concentrated Laundry Detergent is made using water and plant-based cleansers. It is certified organic and made in the United States, and there are scented and fragrance-free options. A 64-ounce bottle costs $9.99. It is supposed to work in front-load and top-load washing machines, as well as for handwashing. Additionally, it is intended to be effective in hot water, cold water, and even hard water. As a high-efficiency detergent made without harsh chemicals, it may sound like a fantastic product. However, some people may find the laundry detergent less effective due to the plant-based cleansers in the ingredients. While many regular laundry detergents use a combination of anionic and nonionic surfactants as cleaning agents, the Originally Yellow detergents list only nonionic surfactants in the ingredients.
Why is Originally Yellow plant-based ultra-concentrated laundry detergent ineffective?
Surfactants are the ingredients in laundry detergents that enable the detergents to remove dirt and oils from fabrics, and there are multiple types of surfactants. Three common surfactants are anionic, nonionic, and cationic. Anionic surfactants are the most common type used in the cleaning industry, and some detergents combine other surfactants with anionic ones for additional benefits. The Originally Yellow detergents, both the organic lavender-infused and fragrance-free varieties, use only nonionic surfactants, which are generally less effective than anionic surfactants. So, if you make a switch to detergents with only nonionic surfactants, you may notice that your clothes are not being cleaned as effectively.
The good news is that there are natural laundry detergent options that use anionic surfactants. If you do not want to sacrifice any cleaning power, you will need to find one of these detergents. For example, this Biokleen Natural Cold Water Laundry Detergent contains the anionic surfactant sodium lauryl sulfate, which can be plant-derived and should help your clothes be more effectively cleaned.